In attempts to win the weekly battle, supermarkets have focused on loud and urgent short-term promotional activity. With rising consumer vigilance and infidelity, this just meant they had to scream even louder the following week. Countdown knew that whilst over 70% of NZ grocery shoppers were shopping with them, over 70% of these were shopping elsewhere too.

With this level of competition in the supermarket sector, the edge lies in the less obvious marketing activities that provide value the customer can appreciate.

Countdown is exploiting one of their points of difference to create Spend Stretch – tapping into the vast quantities of Onecard data held by Countdown around customer shopping and purchasing behaviours and using that data to generate further insights.

Spend Stretch is a programme of campaigns which utilise personalised DM, based on the customer’s purchasing behaviour, to encourage spending a little more with Countdown in order to receive rewards over and above the usual Onecard loyalty rewards.

By implementing Spend Stretch, Countdown has rewarded participating customers up to six times. Generally, engaged Countdown customers are rewarded by Countdown’s rewards programme four times a year when their Onecard vouchers are issued. This equates to an increase of up to 150%.

The objectives for Spend Stretch allow the programme to grow and adapt from iteration to iteration. It demonstrates a forward thinking commitment from Countdown to derive learnings around customer engagement and satisfaction as well as improving the supermarket’s bottom line.